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Kirkliston is a village standing above the north bank of the River
Almond some eight miles west of the centre of
Edinburgh, a little over two
miles south of the southern end of the
Forth Road Bridge,
and less than a mile north west of the main runway at Edinburgh Airport.

The Newliston
Arms

Castle House

High Street

Kirkliston
Health Centre

Main Street

Housing in Kirkliston

Kirkliston
Library

The M9 motorway passes immediately to the south west of the village,
while the M9 spur, which connects the motorway to the approach to the
Forth Road Bridge,
sweeps closely around to the west and north of Kirkliston. It's not obvious to
a modern traveller, but Kirkliston grew up around what for a thousand years was
one of the most important roads in Scotland. The main route from
Edinburgh to
Linlithgow,Falkirk and
Stirling was often travelled
by Scottish Royalty: and by a succession of invading English armies.

Kirkliston Parish Church

Arch, Parish
Church

The Pharmacy

Scotmid Supermarket

Edinburgh Airport

Scotmalt Maltings in
2003

Scotmalt Maltings Site in
2010

The main A9 ran through the centre of Kirkliston until the opening
of the nearby stretch of the M9 and the southern half of the M9 spur in 1970.
This effectively took through traffic out of the village. Not long afterwards
construction of a new main runway was begun at Edinburgh Airport which severed
the old route of the A9 south east of Kirkliston. Separated from the suburbs by
Green Belt but still very convenient for
Edinburgh, Kirkliston
started a new life as a popular dormitory village for the capital.

Kirkliston's origins are ancient. A church stood on a knoll
overlooking the River Almond here in the 1100s, part of an estate held by the
Knights Templar. At the time the settlement around it was known as Temple
Liston. In 1312 the Order of the Knights Templar was dissolved by Pope Clement
V for a range of alleged offences trumped up by King Philip IV of France. All
of their extensive land holdings in Scotland, previously administered from
their monastery at Temple, were
passed to the Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St John, and administered
instead from Torphichen
Preceptory. This seems to be the point at which Temple Liston was renamed
Kirkliston, and much of the structure of the Templar church survives within
Kirkliston Parish Church.

Mills would have been established on the River Almond here from a
very early date. The name "Breast Mill", found on modern maps immediately to
the south of the village and beside the river, marks the location of a 1672
mill and is a reminder of the important of water power right up to, and often
beyond, the industrial revolution. Kirkliston's real period of growth began in
the 1600s when linen weaving got under way in the village, and it became a
burgh in the 1620s.

From the end of the 1700s alcohol started to feature large in the
village's economic life. In 1795 the Glen Forth Distillery started operations
here before later changing its name to the Lambsmiln Distillery and
subsequently to the more memorable Kirkliston Distillery. By the 1880s and
after a series of different owners, Kirkliston Distillery was producing some
700,000 gallons of grain and malt whisky each year. The distillery ceased
whisky production in the 1920s, but was later taken over by Scotmalt to produce
malt extract for the food industry and for home brew beer kits. The Scotmalt
Maltings were largely demolished in 2006 and are due to be replaced by housing
development.

In 1969 a new manufacturing plant for Drambuie opened just to the
west of Kirkliston. This is a whisky liqueur including honey and other
ingredients whose secret recipe was given by
Bonnie Prince
Charlie to a member of the MacKinnon family who had helped him after the
Battle of Culloden. The plant
at Kirkliston was the world's most advanced liqueur manufacturing plant, until
its closure to make room for more housing.

Today's Kirkliston is a slightly odd mixture. Significant amounts of
new housing are being built or are planned around the edges of the existing
village, especially to its north, yet its centre can give a slightly forlorn
feel. This was not helped on our recent visits by the boarding up of the
Kirklands Inn on the main street, nor by the obvious lack of progress on the
redevelopment of the large Scotmalt site. Meanwhile, some of the new housing
development does seem exceptionally close to the motorway. On the other hand,
there remain parts of the village that have real charm, especially around the
parish church.

The centre of the village is dominated by the Newliston Arms, named
after an estate to the south west of the village. This carries on its outside
wall schedules of charges once levied at the tollbar here on traffic travelling
along the turnpiked road to Stirling. Here you find that
every saddled horse was charged 2d (a little under £0.01), while anyone
driving a score of oxen or cattle (20) would have been charged one shilling, or
£0.05.